That’s the point of stopwatch - to be faster than the other team in finishing objectives. If more people turn out to be misunderstanding it, I think that would call for a tutorial revamp.
I personally wouldn’t mind more complex maps for SW, Goldrush (open non-linear geometry, multiple different stages with side objectives being accessible at all times (!)) is still my favorite longplay map. That being said, Radar is a good reference, so I second the notion.
It seems like you are not getting it. Please open your scope and look at all the possibilities. It won’t always be the case that one team manages to do more objectives in the set time.
f.e. both teams managed to do 2 of the objectives. Team A succeeded in doing the first objective in 20s. Team B succeeded in doing the first objective in 21s. Team A succeeded in doing the second objective in 21s. Team B succeeded in doing the objective in 20s.
according to your rule set “the team who managed to do the first obj faster wins” Team A should win this map, and that is total bull. This should be a draw.
According to ‘my’ ruleset, if there’s a double fullhold, the team which manages to finish more objectives wins; if both manage to finish the same number of objectives, the team to finish the last objective faster wins. Either you trigger the winning condition before the timer triggers in the engine (you win) or you don’t (you lose). No place for draws here.
[QUOTE=ToonBE;528754]It seems like you are not getting it. Please open your scope and look at all the possibilities. It won’t always be the case that one team manages to do more objectives in the set time.
f.e. both teams managed to do 2 of the objectives. Team A succeeded in doing the first objective in 20s. Team B succeeded in doing the first objective in 21s. Team A succeeded in doing the second objective in 21s. Team B succeeded in doing the objective in 20s.
according to your rule set “the team who managed to do the first obj faster wins” Team A should win this map, and that is total bull. This should be a draw.[/QUOTE]
so what you do in a bo3 when both teams have won a map each and the other map is what you want to be a draw? In a tournament, one team has to win, how will you decide?
just keep it the way it is
[QUOTE=Kroad;528757]so what you do in a bo3 when both teams have won a map each and the other map is what you want to be a draw? In a tournament, one team has to win, how will you decide?
just keep it the way it is[/QUOTE]
since such draws are EXTREMELY rare, you could very well come up with some random rule to determine the winner, like a knife fight or sth. Or just play a 4th map.
This is the thing that is being solved, most people want to see draws being possible.
Even SD said the current implementation is still a WIP and the draw rules are still being finetuned.
[QUOTE=Mustang;528761]This is the thing that is being solved, most people want to see draws being possible.
Even SD said the current implementation is still a WIP and the draw rules are still being finetuned.[/QUOTE]
But it makes no sense to add draws to Stopwatch. You are either faster or slower (or simply more successful) at completing objectives than your opponent. Looking at this argument from a different point of view, why should we punish a team that was better at completing a set of objectives with a draw if their opponents presented nothing similar to their prowess? And how on Earth will you deal with draws in competitive? First to finish a single objective wins? That just calls for more draws. ‘Very rare’ is not enough to call a ruleset fair and solid.
If the ruleset really has to be changed to appeal to casual player base, then have it be changed for pubs and casual competitive, leave ranked competitive, pugs and league play out of it.
[QUOTE=yakcyll;528763]But it makes no sense to add draws to Stopwatch. You are either faster or slower (or simply more successful) at completing objectives than your opponent. Looking at this argument from a different point of view, why should we punish a team that was better at completing a set of objectives with a draw if their opponents presented nothing similar to their prowess? And how on Earth will you deal with draws in competitive? First to finish a single objective wins? That just calls for more draws. ‘Very rare’ is not enough to call a ruleset fair and solid.
If the ruleset really has to be changed to appeal to casual player base, then have it be changed for pubs and casual competitive, leave ranked competitive, pugs and league play out of it.[/QUOTE]
It’s worked well for competition in RTCW and W:ET, so not clear on where you’re argument for this being a ‘casual’ players request.
‘Complete all the objectives faster than the other team’ - that’s SDs description of Stopwatch in DB (least it says that in the menu description). It doesn’t say ‘Complete some of the objectives or none of them or just simply get a bit further than someone else cos that’ll do, as we never ever want to have a draw scenario’.
Tonight I played a match where we held the 1st obj on Train for 10min, the attacking team didnt complete the second stage. When it came our turn to attack, we completed the 1st obj in something like 4 min…at which point we had ‘won’, yet the game kept going forcing both teams to play out the remaining 2nd objective despite this being irrelevant. Frustrating for both teams.
So if you want fluid win conditions then it has to be made clear at the start of the second round and the game should stop as soon as that win condition has been met.
[QUOTE=montheponies;528764]It’s worked well for competition in RTCW and W:ET, so not clear on where you’re argument for this being a ‘casual’ players request.
‘Complete all the objectives faster than the other team’ - that’s SDs description of Stopwatch in DB (least it says that in the menu description). It doesn’t say ‘Complete some of the objectives or none of them or just simply get a bit further than someone else cos that’ll do, as we never ever want to have a draw scenario’.
Tonight I played a match where we held the 1st obj on Train for 10min, the attacking team didnt complete the second stage. When it came our turn to attack, we completed the 1st obj in something like 4 min…at which point we had ‘won’, yet the game kept going forcing both teams to play out the remaining 2nd objective despite this being irrelevant. Frustrating for both teams.
So if you want fluid win conditions then it has to be made clear at the start of the second round and the game should stop as soon as that win condition has been met.[/QUOTE]
Sorry, I’m a bit confused. RTCW and ET stopwatch is exactly what I’m trying to support. There were no match draws in either of those games. This is not exactly how SW works in DB for the reason you mentioned, i.e. game plays out until the whole map timer runs out. Validity of this has been questioned in another thread before, so I assume SD are aware of it. Now, if we were to adhere to ET SW ruleset, then yes, it’d have to be clearly described for every player wanting to play it, which should be easy enough with the new UI. I find it to be the right way of doing stopwatch, will push this agenda in as many cases as I will find necessary to make a point and am hoping that this is what we will ultimately end up with.
This thread is so painful to read, I don’t think half the posters even know what the other half is talking about.
So if you want fluid win conditions then it has to be made clear at the start of the second round and the game should stop as soon as that win condition has been met.
Absolutely right of course, if one team holds the other on the first objective, and then completes that objective itself, the round should end. Oddly so far this has always been the case in my experience, so it sounds like a bug that is only triggered under certain circumstances.
There were no match draws in either of those games.
Of course there were draws, but it wasn’t good. If maps were likely to be defended for 15 minutes or longer, they were the first to be removed from the map pool, because draws absolutely suck. To even suggest that people actually want these kind of draws to happen is ludicrous.
Because of this problematic, making strong stopwatch maps has always been incredibly hard with a severely limited design space. RTCW maps were all designed to be really hard to defend for more than a few minutes, which is the reason why in competition double rounds were played on each map to make up for the short duration (and randomness this implies).
In ET, people generally wanted the RTCW maps back. Only now we couldn’t play double rounds, because that would make every single ET specific map useless. So we played single rounds on maps which were too fast for it. ET specific maps included: Radar, which just happened to hit the sweet spot of a map which is hard to defend, but USUALLY you can break through within a reasonable time. Only that besides of that lucky punch, the map was actually exceedingly lame (open areas with foliage surrounded by… more open areas with foliage). Supplydepot, which is extremely offensive biased but has been padded out with a massive amount of escorting, bomb planting, and waiting for the crane, so it would usually generate times just below the 10 minute mark. Unsurprisingly this worked well for stopwatch, and unsurprisingly it was rather boring to play. And finally Goldrush, which had to be butchered several times to favour offense and speed up the map, until it was generally accepted as a suitable stopwatch map.
Now put on some rose coloured glasses and suddenly ET had nothing but perfect stopwatch maps, and we should immediately drop everything to return to exactly what it was doing. Screw change.
Sarcasm aside, I think that short rounds played multiple times, like it was done in RTCW, work really well. But if you go down this route you really have to commit to it, and it’s quite clear that Splash Damage has no interest in it. They have gone the opposite route of making longer maps more suitable for stopwatch, by creating multiple win conditions. It may not tickle your personal fancy, but it WORKS, and it’s an inherently elegant design. Games can be exciting, even if they aren’t always played to completion. And the multitude of possible results actually has the potential to create far more varied stories than “this round they beat the time. Now this round they didn’t”.
[QUOTE=Smooth;528473]I personally feel that if a team on Whitechapel:
[ol]
[li]Repairs the EV
[/li][li]Successfully Escorts the EV
[/li][li]Delivers the First Carryable
[/li][li]Almost delivers the Second Carryable but ultimately fails
[/li][/ol]
Then they should win over a team that never even manages to repair the EV.
One team in this case is clearly better than the other. Plus (in this case, completely one-sided) Draws aren’t fun for anyone.[/QUOTE]
I do agree with this, however, I don’t feel that the team that does the previous objective fastest (if both teams are held on the same objective) should get the point.
First reason, I don’t think its very fair when you consider the frequency of high momentum multiple objective takes.
Second reason, it’s hard to get hyped when you know X team has done that objective faster and the game continues (mostly talking about comp play and spectator experience)
Personally the biggest problem I have with Stopwatch overall is that full holds are even possible.
I would love to see balance shifted hugely towards attacker bias and turn the game into more of a case of how long the defenders can hold out rather then how fast the attackers can push (if you know what I mean).
It would be much better for comp when you KNOW that there is a very high percentage chance that the attackers will finish the map.
Turns EVERY decent defence into something epic! and every failed attack into something potentially devastating
I would love to talk to some developers about ideas for better mode flow at some point, I feel that the spectator/competitive experiance could be much improved and that the changes required would actually make the game much more fun in public also.
[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;528774]Personally the biggest problem I have with Stopwatch overall is that full holds are even possible.
I would love to see balance shifted hugely towards attacker bias and turn the game into more of a case of how long the defenders can hold out rather then how fast the attackers can push (if you know what I mean). [/QUOTE]
Yes, I have also agreed to this some months ago already. SW should be about how fast can you do all the objectives, then it is up to the other team to beat that time. This would however mean an overhaul of the maps. Not really a bad thing imo.
[QUOTE=Kroad;528757]so what you do in a bo3 when both teams have won a map each and the other map is what you want to be a draw? In a tournament, one team has to win, how will you decide?
just keep it the way it is[/QUOTE]
About the draws. In csgo draws are possible aswell. I really don’t get the point that draws are “ludablabla”. If a map results in a draw, then there needs to be overtime. I remember a match between NiP and EnVyUs on dust 2 which resulted on multiple overtimes untill there was a winner. 1 map lasted for 2 complete hours(!). Although this is very rare, I don’t see any problem with this… draws and overtimes means that teams are playing on a same level and creates epic matches and tension.
best rules imo:
In my ruleset draws would be still very very rare in dirty bomb. f.e. there are 3 objectives. attacker team manages to do 2 objectives(progression in between cannot count! it is 1 or 0 and not something in between) in 5min25s the other 4min35s they fail on doing the 3th objective. If the other team can beat that 5min25s on the first 2 objectives they win and the map should be over. If they cannot then they have a shot at doing the 3th objective in the remaining time to win. There would only be a draw when the second team on attack matches the EXACT same 5min42s over the 2 first objectives AND also fails on doing the 3th objective. I don’t think we will see this happening too often, it would me very rare. If they however fail on the third objective and they only succeeded to do the first 2 objectives in 5min26s then the other team should win.
These rules also mean that when ALL 3 objectives are done in f.e. 4min23s then the second half will only last that long. If the now on attacker team can beat that time they win. If they can’t they lose. If they EXACTLY match that time within a second(!) it is a draw and there needs to be some kind of overtime and no silly artificial rule.
I just cannot live with such rules. so what you are saying is this. Team A manages to do the first objective in 2 minutes and the second objective in 8 minutes. Team B manages to do the first objective in 3 minutes and the second objective in 7 minutes. ==> Team B wins. That is complete bull. I cannot agree on that.
[QUOTE=PixelTwitch;528774]
Personally the biggest problem I have with Stopwatch overall is that full holds are even possible.
I would love to see balance shifted hugely towards attacker bias and turn the game into more of a case of how long the defenders can hold out rather then how fast the attackers can push (if you know what I mean).
It would be much better for comp when you KNOW that there is a very high percentage chance that the attackers will finish the map.
Turns EVERY decent defence into something epic! and every failed attack into something potentially devastating
I would love to talk to some developers about ideas for better mode flow at some point, I feel that the spectator/competitive experiance could be much improved and that the changes required would actually make the game much more fun in public also.[/QUOTE]
and that will mostly take away those additional win-rules.
if every team could finish a map. but better teams could finish much faster this is perfect stopwatch.
If only there was a game we could learn from that had that approach…Brink 
SD have never made any maps suited to stopwatch so the core of this thread is boiling down to how to bend SW rules to suit unsuitable maps. Nothing elegant about that.
If you have draws, you need tiebreakers. This is even more true if the maps are fairly long by average. In RTCW this was less of a problem because maps were fast, so playing an additional round was not a big issue. In ET we had at least some fast maps, which could be used as a tiebreaker in a pinch.
How would you design a tiebreaker in DB? The best I can think if is to play only the first objective in a stopwatch format. And that’s exactly why using the completion time of the first objective to begin with to break ties makes perfect sense. This is why, if it’s ever changed to be a draw in case of double full holds with equal completed objectives, this should be optional so it can be disabled for tournaments which require a winner.
Even so, I would like to see an official tie breaker system implemented, perhaps for the unlikely occasion of both teams fully holding the first objective.
I am sure we can all agree on that maps should be designed so that most of the time a time is set for the whole map by at least one of the teams. If that’s not the case, then clearly the map needs work. How to make completion more likely in stopwatch than in objective is worth discussing (spawn timers being an obvious first go-to). Asking for completely new maps seems too much, since objective and stopwatch are two sides of the same coin. It would be inefficient and harmful to pub/competitive consistency not to reuse the same maps.
In any case, improving the maps in this regard does not require changing the rules. It’s still a good idea to rule out draws as much as possible, for unlikely situations and to make suboptimal maps at least playable until they are fixed.
[QUOTE=Zenity;528784]If you have draws, you need tiebreakers. This is even more true if the maps are fairly long by average. In RTCW this was less of a problem because maps were fast, so playing an additional round was not a big issue. In ET we had at least some fast maps, which could be used as a tiebreaker in a pinch.
How would you design a tiebreaker in DB? The best I can think if is to play only the first objective in a stopwatch format. And that’s exactly why using the completion time of the first objective to begin with to break ties makes perfect sense. This is why, if it’s ever changed to be a draw in case of double full holds with equal completed objectives, this should be optional so it can be disabled for tournaments which require a winner.
Even so, I would like to see an official tie breaker system implemented, perhaps for the unlikely occasion of both teams fully holding the first objective.
I am sure we can all agree on that maps should be designed so that most of the time a time is set for the whole map by at least one of the teams. If that’s not the case, then clearly the map needs work. How to make completion more likely in stopwatch than in objective is worth discussing (spawn timers being an obvious first go-to). Asking for completely new maps seems too much, since objective and stopwatch are two sides of the same coin. It would be inefficient and harmful to pub/competitive consistency not to reuse the same maps.
In any case, improving the maps in this regard does not require changing the rules. It’s still a good idea to rule out draws as much as possible, for unlikely situations and to make suboptimal maps at least playable until they are fixed.[/QUOTE]
Reworking the first objective of the maps would really go a long way
Holding the first objective should not only require teamplay, but also coordination
there should be 2 points of interest at the first objective, so that attackers can decide to overpower 1.
Terminal tries to do that, but it’s to easy to defend both points at the same time. If the forward spawn on terminal was in that balcony room where the MG is, it would already be a little easier to complete the first objective. The EV maps are the maps where spawnkilling happens the most, because there is only 1 point of interest which furthermore can only be done (effectively) by an engineer.
I can just come up with Radar again :D. It’s not enough to defend the forward spawn, you also need to keep an eye on that wall AND you also need people at the command post. Attackers can decide to focus on 1 and defenders have to adapt to hold it.
It finally occurred to me what my biggest gripe with the present system is:
dead-play time.
If maps tend to be fullholdy (they are), and one team completes 2 objective quickly, but gets stopped at the last objective
a) enjoy ~10min of attacker’s getting smashed on the last obj
b) enjoy the 15min of the next SW round; where the map is decided in the first few min (can these attackers beat the quick obj completion times?), while theoretically they could still finish the map and win the game, its very unlikely - and the remaining 10min is a pointless grind.
Neither do we:
[QUOTE=Smooth;528514]This will be the case eventually, we still have a little work to do with Stopwatch rules in general.
[ul]
[li]Objective 1 completed in 1 min + Objective 2 defended for 14 mins[/li][/ul]
is just as good as:
[ul]
[li]Objective 1 completed in 5 mins + Objective 2 defended for 10 mins[/li][/ul]
Both teams were held to the same end result in the same amount of time (15 mins) so it will be a draw.[/QUOTE]
Closing this thread now since it’s going in circles discussing an implementation that is due to change.
no revives/gibs